Delhi election likely in Jan-Feb 2015

With Delhi assembly elections unlikely to take place with Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir in November-December, the polls in the national capital can be expected sometime in January or early February.

Updated on: Nov 3, 2014, 21:53:28 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With Delhi assembly elections unlikely to take place with Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir in November-December, the polls in the national capital can be expected sometime in January or early February.

The EC sources ruled out the possibility of holding elections for 70-member Delhi elections with that of Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir.

“I don’t think that can happen,” an EC functionary said, adding that it needs to do some ground work before announcing elections in a state. “We don’t have enough time to do the background work for holding Delhi polls with the two states.”

The polls in the two states are being held in five-phases and counting of votes will take place on December 23.

Time is a constraint because the Supreme Court’s had prescribed a mechanism, according to which, the gap between announcement of polls and vote should be about 40 days.

And before making the announcement the Election Commission has to give time to the Chief Electoral Officer to update electoral rolls, notify returning officers and prepare election management plan. “We also have to give some time to the political parties to prepare for polls and consult them,” an EC official explained.

Once the EC receives the notification from the government on dissolution of the Delhi assembly, it will formally start the consultation process for conducting polls with the government bodies and the political parties, the commission sources said. The notification will be issued by President once Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung recommends dissolution of the assembly.

The elections are expected to be held in end January or early February before the President’s rule comes to an end in the Capital. The government believes that holding the elections during that period would be conducive as the January chill in the Capital will ease out.

The timely may help the BJP as prices of vegetables will also moderate with onset of the new season. The party is also expected to make some big bang announcements for the Capital including Renuka Dam for supplying drinking to Delhi and improve functioning of the municipal corporations where the BJP is in power.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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